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Asteya and the commons

Non-taking, attribution, open content, and repair.

Chand Baori, a shared stepwell in Abhaneri, Rajasthan — Chand Baori, Abhaneri: a stepwell built to share water with a whole community. Image: Vetra, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

Taking only what is freely given

Asteya is commonly grouped with the yamas as non-stealing. In a commons setting it includes crediting sources, respecting licenses, and not treating “it’s on the internet” as permission.

The Open Source Definition is an adjacent standard for software freedom — not a claim that every cultural practice is open source: https://opensource.org/osd.

If you reuse Yoga.org materials, follow the site’s terms. If you tell a community’s story, ask. If you broke something you borrowed, repair it.

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Sources

Links were checked for a successful response before this preview. Verse wording on these pages is paraphrase with verse numbers; read the linked editions for full translations.